Edward Cornelius Delavan[1] (1793–1871) was a wealthy businessman who devoted much of his fortune to promoting the temperance movement.
He helped establish the American Temperance Union; attacked the use of wine in Christian communion; established a temperance hotel in Albany, New York; traveled to Europe to promote teetotalism.
In 1846, he received the nomination for the Governorship of New York from the Native American Party,[2] but he declined it.
[4] He later sent a copy of a temperance tract to every soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War (a million copies in all); and sponsored a series of periodicals.
Prohibition or dry towns in Illinois and Wisconsin were named in his honor.